Then Mrs. Gamp rose — morally and physically rose — and denounced her. — Fred Barnard's fifty-fourth regular illustration for Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1872), Household Edition, page 385. Wood engraving by the Dalziels, 10.6 x 13.7 cm, framed. Having arrived as usual for tea (with gin added, one suspects), Betsey Prig seems so put off by her fellow-nurse's chuff that she dares to question the existence of Sairey's universal laudator, Mrs. Harris. Unsteady on her feet from surprise and indignation, Mrs. Gamp new rebukes Betsey for her temerity. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage Illustrated: Betsey Prig Explodes Mrs. Harris

Mrs Gamp resumed:

"Mrs. Harris, Betsey —"

"Bother Mrs. Harris!" said Betsey Prig.

Mrs. Gamp looked at her with amazement, incredulity, and indignation; when Mrs. Prig, shutting her eye still closer, and folding her arms still tighter, uttered these memorable and tremendous words:

"I don't believe there's no sich a person!"

After the utterance of which expressions, she leaned forward, and snapped her fingers once, twice, thrice; each time nearer to the face of Mrs. Gamp, and then rose to put on her bonnet, as one who felt that there was now a gulf between them, which nothing could ever bridge across.

The shock of this blow was so violent and sudden, that Mrs. Gamp sat staring at nothing with uplifted eyes, and her mouth open as if she were gasping for breath, until Betsey Prig had put on her bonnet and her shawl, and was gathering the latter about her throat. Then Mrs. Gamp rose — morally and physically rose — and denounced her.

"What!" said Mrs. Gamp, "you bage creetur, have I know'd Mrs. Harris five and thirty year, to be told at last that there ain't no sech a person livin'! Have I stood her friend in all her troubles, great and small, for it to come at last to sech a end as this, which her own sweet picter hanging up afore you all the time, to shame your Bragian words! But well you mayn't believe there's no sech a creetur, for she wouldn't demean herself to look at you, and often has she said, when I have made mention of your name, which, to my sinful sorrow, I have done, 'What, Sairey Gamp! debage yourself to her!' Go along with you!"

"I'm a-goin', ma'am, ain't I?" said Mrs Prig, stopping as she said it.

"You had better, ma'am," said Mrs. Gamp.

"Do you know who you're talking to, ma'am?" inquired her visitor.

"Aperiently," said Mrs. Gamp, surveying her with scorn from head to foot, "to Betsey Prig. Aperiently so. I know her. No one better. Go along with you!"

"And you was a-goin' to take me under you!" cried Mrs. Prig, surveying Mrs. Gamp from head to foot in her turn. "You was, was you? Oh, how kind! Why, deuce take your imperence," said Mrs. Prig, with a rapid change from banter to ferocity, "what do you mean?"

"Go along with you!" said Mrs. Gamp. "I blush for you." [Chapter XLIX, "In which Mrs. Harris assisted by a teapot, is the cause of a Division between friends," 382]

Commentary: The End of a Fast and Profitable Friendship

Working in the decade following Dickens's death and the retirement of his principal illustrator, Phiz Hablot Knight Browne, Fred Barnard in his significant contributions to the Household Edition had to conform in his characterisations to the original compositions. However, working in the realistic style of the Sixties, he felt free to show the figures in the round and depict them in three-dimensional spaces with realistic furnishings drawn from the letterpress. Here, Barnard has placed the glass of gin and the teapot in the very centre of the composition, with the mantlepiece and prints above it exactly as in Phiz's original illustration Mrs. Gamp propoges a toast (June 1844, see below).

The comic narrative involving Mrs. Gamp's imaginary friend and confidant Mrs. Harris takes a sharp but inevitable turn as Betsey Prig, Sairey's fellow nurse, denounces the very existence of the trusty supporter of all Sairey's views as a mere figment of the Gampish imagination: "I don't believe there's no sich a person!" (although her use of the double negative undermines her assertion somewhat). Such betrayal by a long-term confederate in the practice of nursing (and of fleecing clients) is indeed worthy of artistic comment, so that one may find versions of this scene in the principal nineteenth-century illustrated editions, beginning with Phiz's depiction of the calm before the storm in Sairey's parlour, complete with dresses amounting to duplicate Saireys hanging from the rafters. Although this humorous detail missing in the Barnard version the realia for the scene amount almost to detailism; nevertheless, the viewer's gaze is directed towards the teapot and glasses (centre). In the Barnard version, the pair (filling the frame) are no longer seated comfortably, as in the Phiz illustration, but each has risen to her feet in indignation at the behaviour of the other with respect to the fictive Mrs. Harris. In Barnard's expanded scheme of fifty-eight wood-block engravings she appears six times, excluding her portrait in Barnard's separate 1879 publication, Ten Characters from Dickens, the imperial Mrs. Gamp, on the Art of Nursing (based on Chapter 25, and used as a frontispiece in such cheap American reprints as the Dana Estes volume). The Barnard figure of Sairey Gamp, still something of a caricature, has to support herself by holding onto the enormous chair and the small tea-table, so astounded and wounded is she by Betsey Prig's denial of the very existence of Mrs. Harris ("'arris").

Relevant Illustrations of the Incomparable Sairey, 1843-1910

Left: Hablot Knight Browne's realisation of the scene that begins amiably enough but ends badly in Chapter 49, Mrs. Gamp Propoges a Toast (June 1844). Centre: Harry Furniss's realisation of the scene in which Betsey Prigg reaches the breaking point with Sairey's testimonials by Mrs. Harris, Betsey Prigg and Mrs. Gamp (1910). Right: Harold Copping's 1924 colour lithograph of Betsey and Sairey sharing a convivial glass before their altercation, Sairey Gamp and Betsy Prig in Character Sketches from Dickens (1924). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Relevant Illustrated Editions of this Novel (1849 through 1910)

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.

Dickens, Charles. Martin Chuzzlewit. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1863. Vols. 1 to 4.

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

Dickens, Charles. The Life andAdventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, with 59 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. [The copy of the Household Edition from which this picture was scanned wasthe gift of George Gorniak, Editor of The Dickens Magazine, whose subject for the fifth series, beginning inJanuary 2008, was this novel.]

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. 2.

Dickens, Charles. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 7.

Guerard, Albert J. "Martin Chuzzlewit: The Novel as Comic Entertainment." The Triumph of the Novel: Dickens, Dostoevsky, Faulkner. Chicago & London: U. Chicago P., 1976. Pp. 235-260.

Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 19: Little Dorrit." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 17. Pp. 398-427.

Kyd [Clayton J. Clarke]. Characters from Dickens. Nottingham: John Player & Sons, 1910.

"Martin Chuzzlewit — Fifty-nine Illustrations by Fred Barnard." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, Being Eight Hundred and Sixty-six Drawings by Fred Barnard, Gordon Thomson, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), J. McL. Ralston, J. Mahoney, H. French, Charles Green, E. G. Dalziel, A. B. Frost, F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1907.

Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Copy in the Paterson Library, Lakehead University.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington and London: Indiana U. P., 1978.

_____. "Martin Chuzzlewit's Progress by Dickens and Phiz." Dickens Studies Annual 2 (1972): 119-149.

Vann, J. Don. Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985.


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Created 14 December 2018

Last updated 15 October 2023